Steve Smith's son Connor Smith started with a two handed forehand(intentionally). Steve Smith is the developer of the first 2 year degree program for tennis teachers(tennis tech) in Tyler Texas. Connor is ranked 7 in the nation in the boys 18's. He just started with a full ride at FSU.
I haven't really published much on the web History about "modern schools" of tennis instruction as today. There are numerous tennis schools that I believe have excellent teaching and coaching. However, I do think the USA is missing something or we would not have gone from 69 top 100 players to a dozen if our junior development programs were in sync. Bungalow Bill did make an important point that Oscar needs to focus more on what we all have in common. I have been pushing him in that regards also, but his premise that if tennis instruction is complicated with even one piece of contradictory data, then junior development is stifled, and thus his insistence on a foundation of teaching the double bend from day 1 of every forehand, whether with one handed or two handed, is hard to argue with. When I met Oscar on court in August 2004, he taught both forehands, depending on what he observed. My own son is 12 and hits two handed off both sides because of what I learned from MTM and the subsequent encouragement from Dave Smith's writings. MTM incorporates whatever works as long as it will work for the masses but respects those incredible idiosyncrasies that players often come up with (Francine Durr's index finger down the back of her backhand in the '60s). But my son took up baseball full time because he could not master tennis quickly using the shuffle turn step and hit method I taught him as a certified tennis coach. He just made a baseball all star team which kind of broke my heart because if he hadn't made it, he was going to go into tennis full time. If I hadn't discouraged him with poor instruction from the start, he would be a really good junior player now instead of just a human backboard with nice strokes.
This issue of finding agreement is important. The more I look at Yandell, the more he sounds like Oscar. Doug King admits that he is often compared by his readers to Oscar in his teachings. I have a lot of data on Steve Smith's first accredited tennis degree program and just haven't published it the History of Tennis Instruction on
www.moderntenniscoaches.com or decided where it fits in but Steve will be credited in the book.
I follow Oscar's teaching and help others understand them better because at this point, I believe it's hard to argue that Oscar got too many things wrong. As Dave Smith points out, the advent of high speed video is allowing our juniors to at least have a more accurate idea of what the pros have in common and is forcing coaches to change. I was talking with Ken Flach the other day, who teaches what I consider very modern (windshield wipers, hit up and across the ball), he even was taught to play tennis like ping pong, which Oscar uses that analogy often to describe the modern game. Ping pong is likely what made St. Louis the one time tennis factory of the US during the '60s (per capita). Ken says he's shocked at how "primitive" coaching still is in St. Louis, though he has discovered since he return here, there are more windshield wipers than ever and some better coaching than just a few years ago, and I told him I credit that to high speed video and Oscar and I spending a lot of time here pushing the coaches to teach more "modern."
I believe you can raise a child to a great tennis game with other methods that are nothing like MTM. But I ask,with all the contradictory data being taught to juniors, how many are left at the side, like my daughter, who upon learning MTM, was already a varsity track letterman as a freshman and now could instantly look like a nice ball striker, though raw. She had moved on.
It is a shame when coaches all teach biomechanically different techniques that do not allow every tennis student to develop the correct muscle memory progression that will enable the maximum number of students to play their optimum game. I know that is why Russia dominates women's tennis, because they teach one technique. You don't go to Spartak in Moscow and then to Galex in St. Petersburg and have one coach teaching linear through the target line swings and one teaching angular momentum hit up and across the ball swings. Each coach emphasizes the same windshield wiper swing from day 1 with a finish over the shoulder down the back just like I show in the picture on my Spartak Article on
www.moderntenniscoaches.com. I should publish the emails I received from two Russian academy's in different cities who told me they translate all of Oscar's weekly tennis tips into Russian for their coaches to read and keep up on. One expressed surprise when I told her (she was the psychologist...the only one who spoke English) that Oscar is not the most popular guy over here. If she only knew, lol.
Someone has to hold the line in tennis instruction. Someone has to draw the line in the sand and say the truth that we have complicated what should be a fairly simple game. Oscar feels he has to draw that line, and for that he if often an outcast by those who all claim to have figured out the secret or who also act as if the secret wasn't known until they all discover it. I even wrote proof in the MTM library that all this clay court emphasis you hear at the top now was all said and even predicted by Oscar in that 1989 book. How different things would be if they had listened back then but it took twenty years for the USA to suddenly listen when they had been warned by Oscar TWENTY YEARS ago in a book.
People want to play a game that is not rocket science if the game is to be played for a lifetime. MTM is about to go national with our grassroots movement. At least MTM does not complicate and gets more people playing tennis. Whatever we coaches have done to this game the last twenty years, given what we spend on it, we have not produced anything close to optimal results. Spartak, where kids don't play tournaments for a few years while they ingrain their windshield wipers until they are second nature, is proof that there is a better way.
I have made it clear, that I see a tennis methodology that gets better results than Oscar's MTM, I will ally with it. I like a lot of what I see out there now, but we coaches have to stop fighting and test the data objectively. We are on the right track, and Dave Smith, Doug King, and Jim McLennan are putting out great observations, as is Johnny Yandell, but even people who read them interpret things that they see visually differently because we have ingrained biases and preconceptions. I read every tennis and Add magazine for 25 years but until I understood what Oscar Wegner really meant versus what I was told by some very famous names what they thought he meant, I could not see that the 19 myths in his 1989 book all turned out to be true. I believed other coaches myths that claimed the opposite. I had not idea even when I had Master Strokes 1 and 2 that he taught the double bend from stroke 1. I missed it even watching the videos, I was so blinded by my complicating things and thinking it can't be that simple.
Simplification is key to tennis instruction, but correct biomechanical technique evidenced by the growing role of "myelin" in building muscle memory is proving to be an important componet. That is why I promote the book "The Talent Code" and have posted a couple articles and pics outside the book in the MTM library for all to read and consider. I'm trying to build a grassroots concensus about how to get more players to enjoy instant success which I believe begins with a rally using natural biomechanical swings that produce optimal output with minimal input. That instant success then sparks the flame of ignition that will allow more athletes to have the drive and motivation to given their all in pursuing becoming a tennis champion. We USA coaches have to come to consensus and agreement, but as Dave Smith aptly points out, they often don't even allow real debate of other's viewpoints at the higher levels of coaching. The PTR, the USTA, and the USPTA are all promoting their own agendas and their own people, and tennis, as BB astutely pointed out, has suffered. I just renewed my PTR Pro membership at the last minute. It was tough, but I do it to keep their literature coming given they need the most help. Hopefully Santorum will one day be open to working with those who teach differently and get observable better results. We need a national forum to test the data. That 2001 gathering of coaches should have had Oscar Wegner there, you would think, given his influence worldwide at least. But the usual suspects arranged by Gene Scott were Braden, Bollettieri, Van der Meer, Saviano, Macci, Landsdorp, (I document it it the MTM library) with no real production since that meeting.
Whew, have to spend the say with my son, it's going to rain again. How about that for a Sunday morning rant, lol? Will check from my Blackberry the rest of the day.
